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Content, Context & Capacity: large-scale collaborative digitization at
TRLN
ALA annual 2012, OCLC panel “The Power of Groups: Collaboration and
Innovation”
Joyce ChapmanTriangle Research Libraries Network
BACKGROUND
The CCC project• 3-year LSTA funded digitization grant
exploring consortial large-scale digitization• 400,000 digital objects from four
institutions• Audio, still image, manuscript• Modern 20th century materials• Thematic focus: civil rights movement in
NC
Goals1. To promote and support educational and
scholarly research use of modern manuscripts beyond the walls of our physical buildings
2. To provide a proof of concept for a collaborative approach to large-scale digitization
3. To develop shared standards and practices4. To test inter-institutional workflows between
consortial partners
Triangle Research Libraries Network
Mission: “to marshal the financial, human, and information resources of our research libraries through cooperative efforts, in order to create a rich and unparalleled knowledge environment that furthers the universities' teaching, research, and service missions.”
Triangle Research Libraries Network
• Tradition of cooperative print collecting
• Recent: joint licensing of electronic resources
• Recent: shared staff• Recent: joint search and discovery
interface• New: joint digitization of unique
primary source materials
Preparation• 2008 – TRLN white paper released, “
Large- scale digitization: a TRLN Agenda”
• 2009 – creation of a TRLN taskforce to explore funding for a
planning grant• 2010-2011 – 1-year planning grant• 2011-2014 – 3-year digitization grant
Piloting a sites of excellence model
• NCSU – digitization of oversized materials
• Duke – digitization of still images and
manuscripts• UNC – digitization of audio and
manuscripts
• NCCU – qualitative program evaluation
THE CHALLENGES
Management & communication
Intellectual property strategy
• One of the most ground-breaking aspects of CCC is that all materials are modern 20th century
• 2011: TRLN working group authored “The Triangle Research Libraries Network’s Intellectual Property Strategy for Digitization of Modern Manuscript Collections and Archival Record Groups”
• The strategy provides a well-reasoned risk management approach to large-scale digitization of modern manuscripts
Shared standards and practices
• Developed shared workflows for preparing, shipping, receiving, and scanning physical materials, and delivering / verifying digital files
• Good exercise in letting go of uniformity• Important lessons: documenting
everything, create shared paperwork and tracking mechanisms
Self evaluation responses: biggest challenges
• Different levels of involvement by partners• Getting on the same page about what we
are trying to accomplish• Accepting that we are working “near” each
other; not “with” each other• Designing appropriate formal assessment• Constraints imposed by the language of
the grant
BENEFITS
For member institutions• Laid a groundwork for the future• Tested and proved our ability to
collaborate closely in new areas• Increased publicity and visibility• Brought a new subset of consortial
partner staff into the TRLN fold
Biggest accomplishments in year 1?
• 20%: digital production• 33%: collaboration, flexible
partnerships, group planning, defining a shared scope
For user communities• Making available an enormous quantity
of 20th century civil rights primary sources that were previously inaccessible
• Increased awareness of unique resources at other local institutions
• Increased access to unique materials, regardless of institutional affiliation
For peer library/archives communities
• Our goal was to provide a proof of concept for collaborative large-scale digitization that others could learn from. All of our data, workflows, and findings will be available on our website: – Time and cost for our approach to each step of the
process– Forms and paperwork – Workflows for transferring, preparing, scanning
materials– Quantitative evaluation methodologies and results
